Industry PhD Projects

The Industry PhD Program is engaging industry and universities to train the future workforce through practical, demand driven research projects. Industry partners, in conjunction with academia, provide the Industry PhD research agenda based on their societal knowledge of pressing needs and issues.

RACE for 2030 will fully fund 55 industry PhD candidates to be completed between now and 2030 within the five RACE research programs:

  • RACE for Business
  • RACE for Homes
  • RACE for Networks
  • RACE for EVs
  • RACE for Change

RACE for 2030 will provide three years of funding at $38,000 per annum (tax exempt) to the candidates via a scholarship to the host University. Find out more about our Industry PhD program here.

Below, you will find out current project opportunities and read more about our current projects.

Current Projects

Pathways to Net Zero Precincts – Policy and Practice

The CRC RACE for 2030 Pathways to Net Zero Precincts (NZP) project has been awarded to Curtin University for a three year period and includes several PhD scholarships.

Optimal participation scheme for virtual power plants in energy and reserve markets

A highly competitive scholarship is available to support a suitably interested and eligible candidate to undertake a 3-year Industry PhD research project at University of Technology Sydney.

V2G V2H
Demand management of V2H and V2G using microgrid and energy storage based EV charging systems

The successful PhD scholarship applicant will explore the approach of Vehicle-to-Home and Vehicle-to-Grid System (V2H/V2G) using a Microgrid and energy storage-based EV Charging Systems.

hosting capacity
Coordinated dynamic hosting capacity assessment using artificial intelligence-based techniques

This PhD project on dynamic hosting capacity aims to develop an effective decision support framework based on artificial intelligence (AI)-based algorithms for modelling, analysing, and coordinating the behaviours of photovoltaic systems, storage batteries and electric vehicles to increase their penetration levels without breaching the network constraints and any extra investments. It will allow the industry partner to integrate the proposed tool with their existing software platforms.

DERs
Increasing DER hosting capacity while reducing costs and enhancing energy system resilience

The PhD student will investigate how new customer transaction and business models can be used to accelerate the uptake of Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) in order to cost effectively assist in stabilising the grid during the transition to decentralised energy generation and storage.

Renweable energy
Maximising renewable energy for water corporations through machine learning, peer-to-peer trading and demand management

Water corporations have extensive electricity demands, which lead to high energy bills and significant carbon emissions.

AD
Technologies to improve process performance and methane yields during high-solids anaerobic digestion of sugar mill wastes

Biogas can be produced from anaerobic digestion (AD) of agricultural wastes such as sugarcane bagasse, mill mud and chicken manure.

optimisation
Optimising the total cost of owning and operating centralised chilled water plants

Traditional chiller equipment operation optimisation focuses on short term gains. However, this can be at the detriment to long term equipment lifecycle cost.

Innovative tariffs and demand response potential for residential and industrial customers

Load flexibility will address challenges of the evolving power system in Australia, allowing increased amounts of variable renewable energy to be integrated.

Portable green hydrogen solutions for households

Households are taking control of their energy supply through solar PV systems and increasingly, battery storage and EVs. This Industry PhD project will investigate the role of green hydrogen in the home to supplement these systems and how it can be applied in the Western Australian context. The research questions for this project will investigate the technical, regulatory and social aspects of deploying this energy source in households, in a small scale and possibly portable manner.

Fast-track to Net Zero Carbon buildings

Explore opportunities for dynamic optimisation of energy use in large buildings, responding to weather, building operational data, electricity prices and emissions intensity data to help minimise carbon emissions, reduce energy costs and support the electricity distribution network.

Developing an Australian Trust Index

This PhD project is a unique opportunity to contribute to both theory and practice as the student will work closely with in the energy sector.

Designing distributed renewable micro-grids for reliability

The research is focused on recommended design and engineering principles of totally renewable microgrids with the ambition to outperform traditional networks reliability characteristics, and identify new ways of defining reliability in the context of autonomous microgrids.

Smart Charging Strategies for EVs in Smart Grids

This project aims to develop and implement intelligent techniques to manage the charging and discharging of electric vehicle (EV) batteries and design EV management framework using state of the art artificial intelligence algorithms for addressing major challenges that arise in the deployment and management of EVs in residential and commercial levels.

Off-grid Indigenous community microgrids

A successful clean energy transition requires customers to be central in creating and using clean energy products.

Customer first start-ups and the energy transition

A successful clean energy transition requires customers to be central in creating and using clean energy products.

Prefabricated solutions for retrofitting homes

The scholarship will support research in data science and machine learning, with a focus on commercial building demand forecasting and load optimisation in a dynamic operating environment with potentially conflicting environmental, cost and health objectives.

Data innovation for zero carbon buildings

The scholarship will support research in data science and machine learning, with a focus on commercial building demand forecasting and load optimisation in a dynamic operating environment with potentially conflicting environmental, cost and health objectives.

Optimal planning and operational strategy for biogas power generation system design in wastewater plants

This project will focus on biogas production in a WWTP, and an optimal design strategy will be developed to maximize its revenues and usage. This research is primarily aimed to assist Sydney Water Corporation with problems they are facing, but this methodology can be used for others water supply companies.

Artificial Intelligence for management of electric vehicles and vehicle to grid (V2G) resources optimization

This project aims to develop and implement intelligent techniques to manage the charging and discharging of electric vehicle (EV) batteries and design EV management framework using state of the art artificial intelligence algorithms for addressing major challenges that arise in the deployment and management of EVs in residential and commercial levels.